Ever since she was a 10, Shreya Mishra Reddy dreamed of attending Harvard University. So when she got into Harvard Business School in 2023, she couldn’t quite believe her luck. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be accepted,” she says. “Everybody at home in India was in complete celebration mode, we were overjoyed.” But this week, just as Ms Reddy, 33, was on the cusp of graduating and achieving her lifelong ambition, everything was thrown into doubt. On Thursday, the Trump administration revoked the university’s ability to enrol foreign students and ruled current international students have to leave the university or lose their visa status. Describing the moment she saw the news while she was on a call for her job at Visa, Ms Reddy told The Telegraph: “My heart just skipped a beat and I went completely numb, I couldn’t process it.” It marked a new low in relations between the White House and the Ivy League university, which has sued the administration, claiming it was wielding a “campaign of retribution” against the university after it refused to bow to demands overhaul admissions and teaching practices. The Trump administration has been on a collision course with universities in the US in the wake of the pro-Palestine protests which erupted on campuses last year. The White House claims universities including Harvard have not done enough to stamp out anti-Semitism on campus. Harvard is the only university so far to have pushed back against the administration’s demands, refusing to acquiesce even when the government froze $2.2 billion in federal grants. While a US judge on Friday temporarily blocked the foreigners ban, the future of the 6,800 international students at Harvard – and the hundreds more expected to start this autumn – now hangs in the balance. “It’s come as a blow, and I am still trying to understand the ramifications,” said Ms Reddy, who took out a loan to finance the $90,000 fee. She has one module left in her leadership development course, and was expected to graduate in July. “To put in so much effort, time and everything, all the resources, into applying for a school, getting accepted, and then having been a student there from November 2023 onwards and juggling work as well as as well as the studies, it’s not been easy,” she says. “I’m on borrowed time in the US as an F1 visa holder,” she adds, noting that her visa expires in January and she will have to leave the country. “I am pretty sure that if I don’t finish my program this year, I may not be able to come back,” she adds. Other international students who would be impacted if the ban goes into effect include Marie Chantel Montás, who has just completed the third year of her PhD in global health. Ms Montás, 29, who is from the Dominican Republic, says attending Harvard has been “the best experience of my life”. So when she read about the Trump administration attempting to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, she was in “complete shock”. She is working on a specialised PhD, for which she has already secured full funding, and the idea of simply transferring to another university is not an option for her. “I am just feeling upset and sad,” she says. “I feel like this year has been very tumultuous, one after the other. So just that, it’s more the sense of like, well, I just passed my exams, and being, you know, just became a candidate, and then this happens.” The mood on campus right now is “dampened”, according to Swedish undergraduate Leo Gerdén, who is expecting to graduate on Thursday. “It’s very hard to focus on anything else at the moment, it has definitely changed the sentiment around everything with commencement. It feels so hard to leave this place not knowing whether it will be the same next semester,” he says. “People are so worried.... it’s been people’s dream, just like me, to come to this place and then it can all be taken away from us because we’re being used as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard.” High-profile international students who could have their plans to study at Harvard upended include Princess Elisabeth, the first in line to Belgium’s throne. Belgium’s Royal Palace said it is waiting to find out whether Elisabeth, 23, who completed her undergraduate degree at Oxford, can return to the university for her second year. “We are looking into the situation, to see what kind of impact this decision might have on the princess, or not. It’s too early to say right now,” said the palace’s communications head, Xavier Baert. Henry Tavistock, the Duke of Bedford’s son, is believed to have just completed his first year at the university, where he is part of the Harvard Rugby Football Club team. If he is unable to complete his course it will come as a blow to the family given Mr Tavistock’s father and grandfather both attended the Ivy League university. But it is not just students already at Harvard who could be impacted by the ruling, but also international students who managed to secure a spot at one of the best universities in the world. Giulio Pellino, 17, had only just come down from the excitement of finding out he got Harvard last month when he read about the ban. Now, instead of looking forward to his final summer before hunkering down in one of the campus’s many hallowed libraries, the teenager from Wuppertal, Germany, is unsure whether he will even be able to start. “It is unsettling for many of us, not just for me, because I or international students in general, really want to call the US our academic home, but I am still optimistic,” he tells The Telegraph. Giulio, who hopes to major in economics, still hopes he can begin studying in September, but said he is considering a gap year if it’s not possible. “Getting into Harvard was just a dream come true moment, and I hope I can continue this dream,” he says.